"You're free to go any time you want. It just wouldn't be a good idea. There are people looking for you-some of them you wouldn't like very much."

"Oh. Then I'm being held in protective custody?"

"You're not being held at all."

"Then why am I here?"

"I don't know. It's not my job to answer your questions."

"Is anyone going to answer my questions? Or am I just going to be shoved from place to place until I'm out of everyone's way?"

"That sounds like a good idea. Oh, you can't phone out from here without clearance, but you can get room service."

"Which is the way out?"

"For you? Take the fire stairs up to fourteen or down to twelve and catch an elevator from there. But you won't be able to get back. My advice is for you to do exactly what you're told and wait here." She turned to go.

"Um-Major?"

She stopped and looked at me.

"Am I in trouble? I mean, should I be worried?"

I guess I was scared. I guess it showed in my voice, because she caught herself. A flicker of annoyance had started to cross her face, a reflex reaction to another stupid question, but then she realized the concern behind the question and softened. She said, "You didn't do anything that at least half a dozen other people didn't want to do. You just didn't know why you shouldn't have." I felt the pain of embarra.s.sment flooding into my face-of being identified as the guy who'd screwed things up.

"Is anyone ever going to tell me?" I asked.

She wanted to go, I could see that, but instead she took my arm and dragged me into the room, closing the door behind us. "Sit down." She looked at her watch. "All right, I have time. You want coffee? No? Well, I do." She stepped over to the apartment's kitchenette and opened a cupboard. "You'd better enjoy your coffee today, Jim-there won't be much of it tomorrow."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Listen-what did you major in?"

"Biology. Software. Humanity Skills. Problemantics. The usual."

"Right. Did you take any history?"

"Only the basic requirements."

"d.a.m.n." She was silent a moment. I didn't know if her outburst was because I hadn't taken any history or because she'd spilled some water. She turned back to me.

"Did you have a Global Ethics course?"

"Yeah. Everybody did. It was required study."

"Uh huh. Do you know why?"

"To prevent another Apocalypse."

"Right. What do you know about the Apocalypse?"

"Um, not a lot, I guess. Just what we were taught in cla.s.s."

"Go on," she encouraged.

"Well-you sure you want to hear this?"

"I said, go on."

"Well-um, there was a war. In the Middle East. There are always wars in the Middle East, but this one got out of control. It was between Israel and I forget who, but there were a lot of other countries lined up against Israel. And there were African and Chinese mercenaries involved. And finally it got so bad that Israel had no choice but to threaten to use nuclear weapons. And finally they did."

"And then what happened?"

"The United States withdrew its support for Israel and Israel had to surrender."

"And?"

"Everybody was so scared at what had almost happened that they all went to Russia and signed the Moscow Treaties."

"Yeah." She looked skeptical and turned back to the coffee. "You want milk or sugar?" she asked as she poured. I shook my head. As she handed me the cup, she said, "That version is the one they teach in the schools-but it's so simplified, it's almost a fairy tale. Israel didn't drop those bombs. We did."

"Huh? But that's not-"

"Of course that's not. But the truth is a little less palatable. That was our war and we told Israel to drop those bombs, because we thought it would bring an end to the war. Well, it did-but not the way we thought it would. What they didn't tell you is that the President lost his nerve."

"Huh?"

"What did they teach you in cla.s.s?"

I shrugged. "The way we heard it, there was a midnight Cabinet session and all of his advisors were arguing loudly back and forth about how many people would die in each exchange and whether or not our third-strike capability would survive, and the President was just sitting quietly at the end through all of this, puffing on his pipe like he always did. And finally, after several long hours, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff summed it up by saying, 'The moral arguments are irrelevant here. The war is inevitable.' And that's when the President said, 'Like h.e.l.l it is!' "

"Yeah, that's the story. But it's not true. That is, it's only half true. The part you don't hear is about the ultimatum that the Soviet amba.s.sador had handed him just that afternoon. If Israel launched any more nuclear weapons against Soviet allies, the Soviet Union would view those attacks as originating in the United States, and would respond accordingly. It was the same ultimatum that john F. Kennedy handed Nikita Khrushchev in October of 1962, when Russian missiles were discovered in Cuba-and the Russians were aware of the irony of the situation. They used the exact same phrasing in their note."

"I never heard about this," I said.

"You weren't meant to-but that's what was on his mind during that meeting. That the other side had decided that all-out nuclear war was inevitable too."

"But, I always thought he was a hero."

Major Tirelli looked wistful. "So did I-I still do. And maybe he was-maybe it takes more guts to stay out of a war. But either way, we inherited the consequences of that decision."

I sipped at the coffee. It was hot. And bitter. I said, "What we were taught was that he made a speech, an extraordinary speech, in which he said that the responsibility had been handed to him whether or not the world should be plunged into Armageddon. And regardless of the morality of any other issue, this one fact remained uppermost in his mind: if it could be stopped, it had to be stopped, and he would do whatever was required of him to prevent the deaths of millions and millions of human beings. He said that by the act of using nuclear weapons, a nation disqualifies itself from the community of rational thought."

"I heard the speech," she said. "My parents made me stay up to hear it. But I didn't understand what it meant until later. That man went to Moscow, hoping that it would be seen as a gesture of sanity. Instead, they saw it as capitulation and forced him to accept a crippling peace, a debilitating compromise. The tragedy is he knew exactly what they had done to him. Oh, he looked like a hero-he was being hailed as a courageous man all over the world-but he knew what he had given away: America's right to protect her foreign interests. What do you think Pakistan was about? It was an attempt to reestablish the old prerogative. And it failed. This time it was the Chinese who handed us the ultimatum. And this time, the treaties were even more crippling. Do you know what the allies did to Germany after the First World War? They took away that nation's right to an army. That was what was done to us. The United States was told that our existence as a nation would continue only so long as we maintained no direct threat to any other nation on this planet. And the cooperation with that agreement would be monitored by an international committee."

"We never heard this," I said.

"I told you, you weren't meant to. It's a part of our history that we aren't very proud of, so officially, it doesn't exist-like all the other pieces of history we don't acknowledge."

I hid my reaction behind the coffee cup again. When I lowered it, I said, "Is that why the foreign delegates are so paranoid about the way we want to fight the Chtorrans?"

"Right. Very few foreign governments see the Chtorrans as the threat we do. The reasons are varied. Some of them don't see science as anything more than a way to make the crops grow bigger. Others don't think the Chtorrans will be a threat next year because they aren't a threat this year. Most of the people we're dealing with don't even comprehend the scale of death produced by the plagues-so how can they comprehend that the plagues are only a small part of a much larger infestation?"

"Then Dr. Zymph was right?"

"If anything, she was understating the case. You've had enough direct experience with the Chtorr to know what they're like. But try to tell that to someone who's never seen one in action. They won't comprehend it. They don't want to."

"Doesn't that get frustrating?"

Lizard nodded wearily, and grinned. "Incredibly so!" She sipped at her coffee, then said, "Dr. Zymph knew that was how the delegates would react. She was willing to have it. We have to keep putting the facts out, but it happens every time the subject is raised in the international community. The delegates go crazy. They see the Chtorrans only as America's latest rationalization for rearmament. Listen, we're already rearming ourselves. We don't need a rationalization." She shook her head sadly. "But they're frightened; that's what it really is. Just about every nation on this planet is in trouble of one sort or another-there isn't one of them that isn't vulnerable to the first serious military threat that occurs. They're not concerned about the Chtorrans because they've never been bitten by one-but they're sure as h.e.l.l scared of American military power, because they're still carrying scars. At least we're a threat they can comprehend, so they're displacing their fear and their anger onto us." Lizard looked at me. "Now do you see what kind of cow pasture you stepped into?"

"Ugh," I said.

She glanced at her watch. "I gotta go-but look, you can use the terminal here to tap into the History section of the Library of Congress. You might find it interesting. You probably don't know it, but as a member of the Special Forces, your security clearance is high enough to get you access to most of what you need to know."

"I didn't know that."

"Then you've got an interesting afternoon ahead of you. It'll be a while before anyone can get back to you. Be patient, okay? There are some decisions that have to be made first-"

TWENTY-FIVE.

I HADN'T thought about Whitlaw in a while.

I wondered if he was still alive. I'd never given it any thought before; I couldn't imagine him dead. I'd always just a.s.sumed he would be one of the survivors.

But then again, I couldn't imagine Shorty being dead either. Or my dad. And they were-so what did it matter whether I could imagine it or not? The universe was going to do what it d.a.m.n well wanted regardless how I or anyone else felt about it.

Whitlaw ran his cla.s.s the same way. He didn't care how we felt either. "You don't get to vote," he used to say. "You already did when you put yourself in this cla.s.s. You belong to me, body and mind, until I'm ready to turn you loose upon the world."

The cla.s.s was a two-semester unit. Toward the end of the first semester, Whitlaw abruptly asked, "Does anyone here know why this is a required course?"

"If we don't take it, we don't graduate." That was one of the mindless lurches who usually roosted in the last row of seats. A couple of his buddies laughed.

Whitlaw eagle-eyed the hulk over the heads of the rest of us. He gave him a thorough half-second of examination and then said, "That isn't the answer I was looking for, but considering the source, I guess it's the best I could have expected. Anyone else?"

No. No one else.

"It'll be the first question on your final exam." he prompted. Someone groaned.

Whitlaw stumped back to his desk. I wondered if his limp were bothering him. He didn't look happy. He opened the loose-leaf binder he used as his source book and paged through it silently, until he found the page he was looking for. He studied it with a thoughtful frown. After a moment, he looked up again. "No takers?"

No. We'd gotten too smart for that.

"Too bad. All right-we'll try it this way then. How many of you think it's appropriate for a population to rebel against tyranny?"

A few hands went up immediately. Then a few more, tentatively, as if terrified that they were volunteering to be on the front lines. Then a few more. I raised my hand. Pretty soon almost everyone had. Whitlaw didn't wait to see if it would be unanimous. He pointed at one of the abstainers. "How about you? Don't you think so?"

"I think you have to define your terms. You're being too general. What tyranny? Which one?"

Whitlaw straightened and eyed the fellow with narrowed eyes. "Are you on the debate team? No? Well, you ought to consider it. You're doing everything but confronting the issue. So all right, I'll make it easy on you-" He closed his book.

"-Let's say this room is the nation of Myopia. I'm the government. You're the citizens. Now, you know governments are not free. So the first thing I'm going to do is collect taxes. I want one casey from each of you." He started striding down the aisles. "Give me a casey. No, I'm not joking. These are your taxes. Give me a casey. You too. Sorry, I don't accept checks or paper money. What? That's your lunch money? Gee, that's tough, but your government's needs come first."

"But that's not fair!"

Whitlaw stopped, his hand full of coins. "Who said that? Take him out and execute him for sedition!"

"Wait a minute! Don't I get a fair trial?"

"You just had one. Now shut up. You've been executed." Whitlaw kept collecting. "Sorry, I want exact change. You don't have it? Don't worry about it. In your case, I'll levy a four-casey surcharge. Consider it a penalty for paying your taxes with paper money. Thank you. Thank you-fifty, seventy-five, a casey, thank you. All right, I've got forty-eight caseys here. This'll buy me a good lunch. Everybody be sure to bring another casey tomorrow. I'll be collecting taxes every day from now on."

We looked at each other nervously. Who was going to be first to complain? Wasn't this illegal-a teacher taking money from his cla.s.s?

A tentative hand. "Uh, sir ... your majesty?"

"Yes?"

"Uh, can I ask a question?"

"Mm, depends on the question."

"Can we ask what you're going to do with our money?"

"It's not your money anymore. It's mine."

"But it was ours to start with-"

"-and now it's mine. I'm the government." He slid open his desk drawer and dropped the coins loudly into it. "Eh? Your hand is still up?"

"Well, it just seems to me-to all of us-"

"To all of you?" Whitlaw looked at us with raised eyebrows. "Is this an insurrection that I see before me? I guess I'd better hire an army." He stumped to the back of the room, pointing at the huskiest boys in the cla.s.s. "You, you and, ah, yes, you too. And you. Come up front. You're now in the army." He opened the drawer and scooped up coins. "Here are two caseys for each of you. Now, don't let any of this rabble near the royal palace."

The four boys looked uncertain. Whitlaw shoved them into position between himself and the cla.s.s. "Now then-you were saying?"

"Mr. Whitlaw!" Janice MacNeil, a tall black girl, stood up. "All right! You've made your point. Now give everybody back their money-" Janice was in student government.

Whitlaw peered between the shoulders of two of his tallest "soldiers." He grinned. "Uh uh," he said. "This game is being played for keeps. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

Janice didn't fl.u.s.ter. She said, "I'll go to a higher authority." Whitlaw was still grinning. "There aren't any. This cla.s.s is autonomous. See that plaque on the wall? That's the charter of the Federal Education System. You've been in this cla.s.sroom nearly every day for eighteen weeks, and I'll bet you still haven't read it, have you? Too bad-because that's the contract you agreed to when you entered this cla.s.sroom. I have total authority over you."